We don’t usually get to read what people in the Ozarks are reading. When an editorial from last week’s Arkansas Times came our way, we realized they’re reading what we’re reading. Have a look: Scroll down to the second bullet or digest it here. It’s taken from an interview with John Hess, author of “My […]

Unless I’m wrong, pandas at the zoo get more press attention than the winners of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. This year’s winners were named over the weekend. They included Henry Wiencek in history, for “An Imperfect God,” and Ishmael Reed, who received the Robert Kirsch Award for “Blues City: A Walk in Oakland.”  Did […]

Once upon a time Ernest Hemingway wrote a tribute, “On the American Dead in Spain” (scroll to page 37), to the 800 members of the American Lincoln Brigade who gave their lives for the Republican cause against Franco’s fascists during the Spanish Civil War. His tribute begins: “The dead sleep cold in Spain tonight. … It was […]

I wish I’d known this woman. Have a look at some of her columns and memorable words. Robin Toner’s touching obituary quotes her as saying: “I should confess that I always felt a little sorry for people who didn’t work for newspapers.” She said it before “the recent troubles,” to use an Irish phrase for […]

They were trying to be funny. Publishers Weekly’s PW Daily for Booksellers actually published this in an email distributed to subscribers: Books Too Boring Compared to TV Trade book sales fell 100% to $0.0 in 2003, according to the Association of American Publishers, as a bumper crop of compelling reality shows ranging from Average Joe […]

Back in March, we took notice of the Dieter Roth retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. ArtsJournal colleague John Perreault recently reviewed it and quoted Roth dissing the Fluxus group with which he was associated: In fact, Roth hated Fluxus: “It was the club of the untalented who made a verbal virtue of their […]

The Guardian in London has launched a week of arts coverage by guest editors, and it’s not to be missed. On Monday the < FONT color=#003399>Franz Ferdinand issue had “a different take” on tabloid newspapers’ topless pictures (an article < FONT color=#003399>about censorship by the photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, who shot this bottomless image); a tale of < FONT color=#003399>music lessons (have they […]

Book critic Michiko Kakutani has the fine habit of writing accurate reviews. I trust them. The other day, though, her review of Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar struck a weird note. Was Stalin, as she seemed to allege, a classical pianist? Quoting the book’s author, Simon Sebag Montefiore, she wrote: Stalin, Mr. Montefiore […]

Apparently a different one from Donald (“You bet!”) Rumsfeld, whose command of verbal tactics challenges the basic meaning of words. For instance, when asked Tuesday whether the Pentagon was considering the deployment of more troops to Iraq, he replied: “Are we considering it? No. But have we prepared? You bet.” It would take the editors […]

Strange to say, one of Straight Up’s most faithful readers is a raving rightwing lunatic who sends nicely designed but anonymous emails telling us how great we are, except for what he considers our raving leftwing lunacy. Because we’re so bloody fair-minded, we thought we’d give him the soapbox we keep in the corner for […]

Always good to see the editorial page of The New York Times ratifying our snap judgments. The editorial board must be genteel, of course. It cannot be as blunt as we were about Colin Powell, but its considered opinion this morning is pretty much the same. This is what we said yesterday: So he warned […]

So Colin Powell didn’t want to go to war. So he warned our dopey Maximum Leader about owning Iraq. Let’s not make the U.S. Secretary of State a hero. Isn’t he the man of principle who went to the U.N. with so-called proof of WMD in Iraq, which he in fact doubted? Didn’t his diplomatic […]

What Calvin Trillin’s poetry is to The Nation, Leon Freilich’s is to Straight Up. Noting our question earlier today — we asked for thoughts on “whether ‘the little fucker’ should be our Maximum Leader’s new designation” — Leon penned us this verse: BUNGLE BOY “The little fucker” goes too far;The guy ain’t quite a bloody czar.Something more moderate is dueThe man […]

It was ’60s and ’70s hard rock. Jason Keyser, the AP reporter who filed the news story from Falluja that U.S. troops challenged insurgents to come out and fight by blasting rock music at them, identified AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix as the artists whose music they used.  That at least shows excellent taste and probably that the troops […]

Wrapping the week: U.S. troops reportedly blasted rock music at the insurgents in Falluja to provoke them into a fight. Now that’s an idea that Rummy, Wolfie and the boys never thought of: weaponizing American pop culture to win the war in Iraq. What beats do you think the troops used? 2Pac’s? Eminem’s? 50 Cent’s? Snoop Dogg’s? Jay-z’s? Notorious B.I.G.’s? Ludacris’s? Dr. Dre’s? Nelly’s? […]

“Whatever else there is to say, the guy is simply out of his league,” we said. Charles Pierce, sitting in for Eric Alterman thank you, said the else today in funny, exquisite remarks: Holy Mother Of God God knows we’ve all made happy sport of the Avignon Presidency, especially in this little corner of the […]

Tomorrow’s a big day for Harrison Ford. The theater where he made his West Coast stage debut, The Laguna Playhouse, is to honor him as its “most distinguished alumnus.” The playhouse — which was founded in Laguna Beach, Calif., in 1920, making it one the nation’s oldest continuing theater companies — doesn’t say who the […]